With the advent of the computer age, computer and software users have grown accustomed to user-friendly software applications that help them write, calculate, organize, prepare presentations, send and receive electronic mail, make music, and the like. Modern word processing applications, for example, allow users to create and edit a variety of useful documents. Modern project management applications, for another example, allow users to create project schedules for organizing and managing tasks, resources and the labor associated with a variety of projects.
Manual and computerized project management systems allow managers and planners to organize and schedule the tasks, resources and timing required for completion of a given project. In most projects, a number of dependencies and constraints dictate the timing and completion of an overall project and of sub-projects contained in the overall project. For example, in a house construction project, a drywall project may not typically begin until the completion of electrical work. And, a number of sub-projects may be constrained by the availability of labor and resources. Project management software applications have been developed, for creating and automating project schedules. With many such systems, tasks or sub-projects within an overall project are set out showing start dates, completion dates and information regarding utilized resources or constraints thereon.
Prior project management schedules typically may be edited by any person having edit permissions, and changes made to a given schedule are automatically made throughout the schedule without warning to other affected parties. For example, following the example construction project set out above, if an electrician makes changes to his/her portion of a house construction project schedule, a drywall professional's schedule may be automatically changed without notice to the drywall professional. Some systems have been developed to allow the owner/manager of a sub-project within an overall project to independently manage the sub-project schedule, but because the performance of the sub-project may serve as a constraint on the performance of the overall project, changes to the sub-project schedule nonetheless cause changes to the overall project and to other sub-projects comprising the overall project. Because of these types of problems, the project schedule is often reduced to a mere snapshot view of the project schedule which must be closely monitored by all project participants due to the nature of such automated changes and to the lack of automated notification of changes to the project participants.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved project management methods and systems that allow for independent management of sub-projects, and that allow for notification and change acceptance to and from project participants. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.